Middle East

Israel's Public Relations: The Problem and the Solution

In 1882, an Ottoman census showed 141,000 Muslims in the country; in 1906, of the 60,000 inhabitants of Jerusalem, 40,000 were Jews. Jerusalem, except for fewer than 200 years in the 11^th and 12^th Centuries, when it was the capital of a short-lived Crusader State, has only been a capital city under Jewish rule. At other times since the Roman conquest it was not even considered by Muslims or anyone else, a provincial city of consequence.

In the War of 1948-49, Jordan illegally seized Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish inhabitants, destroyed all the synagogues and on top of the ancient sacred Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, after taking ancient Jewish headstones to use as the floor of latrines, Jordan built a hotel, overlooking dead Jews.

During the British Mandate, which lasted until May 14, 1948, while the 1936 British White Paper restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine to 75,000 over a five-year period, Arabs from all the neighboring territories were allowed to flood, unrestricted, into the country.